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RE: There is going to be blasphemy here. Big time Blasphemy! Thank God for XVIII Century Illuminism. (Letters 8.0)
NIetzsche's God meets Schroedinger's Cat?
Does anyone here know the context or story wherein Nietzsche put the phrase 'God is dead'?
I Kow it appears in the Gay Science, which I did not read, but I also know it's the premise for Also sprach Zaratustra, which I am a huge fan of. I also read Ecce Homo.
'Ecce Homo' is in my rucksack, and there you might have read that not all who have read 'Also sprach Zarathustra' did get the message...
Nevertheless, 'Die fröhliche Wissenschaft' indeed is the book, but this is not the context or story.
I believe I got it, yes... A long, long time ago. Also, I adore the Strauss piece too.
http://www.zeno.org/Philosophie/M/Nietzsche,+Friedrich/Die+fr%C3%B6hliche+Wissenschaft/Drittes+Buch/125.+Der+tolle+Mensch
'Der tolle Mensch' (the insane person) is the title of the full story.
See for yourself whether it is meaningful to isolate the phrase 'Gott ist tot' (God is dead) from the whole story or not.
I think it is not.
Oh man! I knew this story. It was on my 11th grade Philosophy book and I believe it came up in the exam. I had totally forgotten about it. As school manuals carry dispersed texts and we tend to forget them as time passes (and a shitload of time did pass), sometimes, there are things we know and read before that we can't quite place. This is one of those cases. Although I didn't read the full book, I had read this, and probably a couple more exerpts, before.
In my opinion, the expression can not be taken out of context in this story, thus, as a statement, you can not isolate it from the story.
Zarathustra does carry the interpretation of an unintersted, disconnected or we can assume "dead" God, that got things in motion and left us with the responsability to reach for a God like status ourselves, in a way that can be interpreted to mean that we are a in sort of a cocoon state between a caterpillar and a butterfly. As a freemason, I understand Nietsche's work as a paralel to the theorization of the reasons for the non-operative masonic work of polishing the rough stone that we are into a more perfect state. That is undertood as the both the objective and the responsability of each individual mason. Under that definition, I interpret Nietsche's metaphors as a call for greater responsability in the use of our own free will and a call to better ourselves. Of course, I may be totally wrong, and those who have given it the tortuous biological significance that has cost us millions of lives and a world war might have been right, but I don't think so. I stick with my interpretation.
Edit ( A few minutes later): Nietsche was a fellow freemason, so... He may have been in accord with my view of his texts.
Hum.
Whilst reading 'Ecce Homo', I fear he would laugh.
I know he was deeply sour about his masonic experience and at a point, rejected it. I don't know the details about that. Still Ecce Homo is a different book. I also tend to reinteroret what I wrote in earlier years. Zarathustra, on the other hand, appears to be a confrontation of the Masonic Hiram legend.
Note: I don't go as far as to be nihilistic. Also, you have to set yourself to the time period and his health condition.
I'm sure he would laugh. And I would probably laugh with him. Still... I don't avocate the nihilistic view of Ecce Homo, as much as I like the book, I would never make it my guide.
Nicht Nietzsche ist der Nihilist, sondern er attestiert seinen Zeitgenossen Lebensferne, Sinn-Verlust, Leere und Wert-Losigkeit.
Nietzsche is not the nihilist, but he attests to his contemporaries detachment from life, loss of meaning, emptiness and distance from true values.
https://suno.com/song/eaba4d6e-f7ab-4bc4-a48b-6e2c8d859dbc?sh=HBeQnvJQ7N7PYcfk
I don't know the author, found the song by chance...
I just arrived from a Theatre Play by Marius Von Mayenburg that explored the meaninglessness of existence and the absence, or death of the creator... WIth some Nietsche towards the end. I'm still processing it. :)))) I will read that article and comment on it tomorrow morning. I hope you are fully recovered now.
Cheers.
On another note... There is always a cat.
Nietzschinger's God-Cat.
Exactamondo!